Columnist Col (Retd) ABDUL QAYYUM talks about the ideas that have shaped the growth of the Pakistan Army.

In our quest of the themes that dominate in the Pakistan Army’s mosaic of ideas, here I go again surfing the web of my memories. The pointer, “the mouse” as my 13-year old PC teacher revels in calling it, comes to rest this time on Sahabzada Yaqub Khan. I’ll not rush, I’ll take my time, even as I ponder over what to write and how on a man whom I have known for so long and so well, a man whose impact on the Army’s mosaic of ideas has been and will continue to be of considerable significance.

It is difficult writing on a living personality but it has some advantages. Both the object and the observer stand face to face, and memory must take care not to be distorted by imagination, particularly when it is freed from the labours of the research scholar. If the compliments are sincere, based on direct factual observation, and so is the criticism, neither should do any damage either way. Such argument and inference as the observer may present remain his own, and there can be debate not just lively but also living. So, how do I go about it? Lazily, as before, ambling down memory lane and picking up the pieces that age has not withered.

The Sahabzada was my first Commanding Officer (CO) when I joined my regiment (11th Cavalry (FF), Kohat, 1953) as a green subaltern straight out of the Military Academy. Since then, as I write today, close to half a century has gone by and I have remained in touch with him all along, more or less. The memories of a lifetime cannot be compressed into a single article and the DJ (Defence Journal) will, I hope, not be averse to a serialisation of the booklet that I had in mind within the framework of the Pakistan Army’s “mosaic of memories and ideas”. The bits and pieces come from my personal diary over the years, and are now presented in the following order:

Author’s Note.

• Part I: Prologue

• Part II: Anecdotes.      

• Part III:Perception.

• Part IV:Epilogue

This is an ongoing story, a part of the wider enquiry whose goal and methodology I have already explained. For a while, however, the focus is on SAHABZADA YAQUB KHAN.

Author’s Note.

These pages find their way into print quite unexpectedly, like my earlier attempt at Zia-ul-Haq and I. The brevity of it may be forgiven because it was never conceived as a book and is, in fact, integral to what is still a running manuscript. That manuscript, if it catches the eye of a publisher, may carry the title Recollections and Reflections.

Sahabzada Yaqub Khan is a well-known name in the Armed Forces, the Civil Service, a wide circle of intellectuals and what we call NGO’s in contemporary Pakistan. He is equally well-known in diplomatic circles in many capitals of the world of our day. To know a name is hardly enough and these few pages may preserve for posterity the image of a man who deserves to be remembered.

I have known the Sahabzada for many long years, from 1953 to this day as I write. He is still alive and may he live long to share with us his experiences of a life-time Like Nirad C. Chaudhuri, who continued to write at the age of a full hundred years, the Sahabzada owes it to us to let us hear from him in writing.

What I have written is from direct and personal experience, truthfully recorded from vivid impressions, arranged in some chronological sequence for the emergence of a coherent portrait. I do not expect everyone to agree with me in every detail. The portrait remains my handiwork and I do not claim to be a Bevan Petman or a Gulgee.

This is not a command performance, nor has it been what we call ‘vetted’. It will be seen by the Sahabzada for the first time along with the others who care to read it. My joy has been in the writing of it and that joy would have been sullied if I had changed even a word on someone else’s advice. If the reader finds some pleasure in reading it, it will add to my joy.

Part I: Prologue

In 1953 Sahabzada Yaqub Khan was Commandant 11th Cavalry (FF) in Kohat and Peshawar. He was my first commanding officer when I joined the regiment fresh from the Military Academy. I served as one of his staff officers when he became a brigadier, Director Armoured Corps at the GHQ. When he commanded the 6 Armoured Division (Kharian, 1962), I was his GSO-3 (Operations). He was Commandant Staff College when I did my Staff Course (Quetta, 1963). When he took over command of 1 Armoured Division in the field (Headquarters at Nandipur near Daska, 1966), I was Brigade Major 3 Armoured Brigade and remained close to him. Earlier, when he was Chief of the General Staff at GHQ, I was a GSO-2 in the Military Operations (MO) Directorate, along with Muzaffar Malik, “one of his two principal staff officers”! During his first year in East Pakistan, I visited him along with my old man and my brother Professor Munier Chowdhury, gave him some lessons in Bengali. When he went on to be our Foreign Minister under Zia-ul-Haq for ten long years, I remained in touch with him from my post at the Ministry of Information (1978-88), particularly when Rafat Mahdi (now our High Commissioner in Ottowa) was his staff officer. Now that he lives a semi-retired life at a less furious pace, still gadding around the globe though, he finds time to call me once in a while. We have been together in his elegant home in Islamabad several times. I am not so comfortable when he comes to our modest apartment in Rawalpindi.

I like to think I understand Yaqub Khan better than many others do. At par, I think, with my understanding of Zia-ul-Haq. Two others I know, who would know Yaqub Khan just as well, are Muzaffar Malik (over a spectrum and a range matching my observation of him) and Rafat Mahdi (over a shorter duration but as intense, particularly in their speciality of diplomacy and foreign affairs). Many others take both Yaqub Khan and Zia-ul-Haq as junk or genius, each in his own way, aliens from outer space, good or bad. Not true. The misunderstanding is due, in no small measure, to their own penchant for mystery which neither made any real effort to dispel. They were just too busy being themselves and the public eye, misty or malicious, saw as it pleased. The two went, each his own way, the former with an inscrutable stare, the latter with a hearty chuckle.

I have already written about Zia-ul-Haq and I will write a little now about Yaqub Khan. But before I do, a few words about the two witnesses: Muzaffar Malik and Rafat Mahdi, both themselves exceptional men.

I have known Muzaffar Malik for close to 45 years, from our days as subalterns in the regiment (1953) to this day in his lonely home in Lahore (1988) as he wages a valiant struggle against the deadly disease that afflicts him. As our Senior Subaltern, Muzaffar had the growl of a sergeant major, a perpetual frown on his forehead, a passion for good order and military discipline more draconian than the vision of the MPML (Manual of Pakistan Military Law). He was the terror that his exalted post authorised him to be. Muzaffar mellowed with the years — slowly.

 He was my GSO-1 (MO-3), when Ghulam Umar was the DMO and Yaqub Khan the CGS, the staff officer par excellence acute, methodical, thorough, with a clear grasp of essentials and also an eye for detail. His passion for clarity, precision and discipline came into full view in the minutes that we together drafted for all the knotty files that Yaqub Khan threw at us. We became a virtual two-man consultancy adept at cutting the Gordian Knot. Muzaffar thought we should set up a firm and call ourselves Files and Files (Incorporated).

After I left for Germany to attend the General Staff Course, Muzaffar went into battle (1965) as the second-in-command of 11 Cavalry (FF). Somewhere between Chawinda and Phillora an artillery shell fell too close for comfort and Muzaffar was literally torn to pieces. His survival was a miracle, his recovery in hospital (CMH Rawalpindi, under General Shaukat’s care) an epic saga of courage and will. He left hospital a physically mutilated man, but indomitable of mind and spirit.

Muzaffar went on to man the Ops Room at the National Security Council during the debacle of 1971, while General Umar and others went around contributing to the debacle. My diary of those days records his pain and frustration and also, for the first time, the confusion so uncharacteristic of him.

When Zulfikar Ali Bhutto rose to power promising to pick up the pieces and make us whole again, he chose Muzaffar Malik as his Secretary Interior and later made him Chief  Secretary of the Punjab. Always in the eye of a storm, treading deftly between the devil and the deep sea, Muzaffar served his Prime Minister as only Muzaffar could have done: his mind set on executing to perfection every task assigned or undertaken, with clinical detachment and without any moral qualms of the kind which would have overwhelmed me. Muzaffar was a resounding success wherever he went, wherever he was. Don’t get me wrong, go carefully down the line. I have adequate evidence to confirm that he was no Gwynn Dyer or Eichmann.

Muzaffar called it a day with two tenures as our ambassador in Athens. He found a little peace there on the shores of the Mediterranean but the sun always sets. He is now in Lahore, alone in his struggle against a deadly disease, with Akram Syed and Samina as occasional visitors, Qayyum available on the phone and Parveen ready with a table spread when he comes to Pindi once in a blue moon.

Rafat Mahdi is on many counts, an exceptional man. He is, in my estimation, one of our two top men in the Foreign Office, the other one being Jehangir Ashraf Qazi. About him, later.

I got to know Rafat when he was Yaqub Khan’s principal staff officer. The Foreign Minister knew how to choose his men. Rafat was as cool as he was acute, both courteous and forthright, competent, conscientious, indefatigable - a very gentle version of Muzaffar Malik. I’ll say this of Yaqub Khan: he brought me in touch with some exceptional men, Zia-ul-Haq included! Men of many hues, intricate mosaics all, whatever the end pattern, the dominant colour, texture, measure and the final composition of each. Rafat, I think, is a Renoir: a diplomat cast in the wispy colours of the Three Bathers!

What made me an ardent admirer of Rafat was our encounter in Brussels (1994). He was our ambassador there and I had gone as a member of a Pakistan delegation to present our case on Kashmir before a select panel of parliamentarians of the European Union. Rafat’s management of the mission, individual delegates and their collective performance, was astute, always low-key and always effective. He had time for everyone and everything, including two night-long vigils to get Amanullah Khan out of the clutches of the Interpol, the Belgian gendarmerie and the wily manoeuvres of the local Indian Embassy. Gentle, cool, soft-spoken (even with idiots and rascals), Rafat was always alert and active with a winning way about him: in my eyes the quintessential diplomat, among our finest ambassadors anytime and anywhere in the world. I have several incidents and episodes to recall, but not here, not now.

I am glad I got to know Rafat Mahdi. I am glad I was around to say a few prayers for him at the farewell lunch that Najmus Saqib arranged before left to take up his post as our High Commissioner in Canada. The last of the prayers was, from what I know of Rafat Mahdi, a prayer answered:

“O Allah! Make me patient, make me grateful.

Make me, in my own eyes, insignificant;

In the eyes of mankind, big!”

*************************************************

Part II

Anecdotes

Sahabzada Yaqub Khan was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He came to 11 Cavalry (FF) with two silver plates. Then, one day at lunch, the unspeakable happened. He was served with cold meat “undressed”, and boiled potatoes not much to look at (not uniform in size, carelessly pealeed, a little soggy and looking like all other potatoes in Pakistan). To make matters worse, the bearer had forgotten to put on his gloves, the plate before the Colonel was ordinary bone - china, and the service came to a stop when the trembling spoon of the bearer touched the edge of the Colonel’s plate with a less than holy “clink”. Out stormed the Sahabzada and we were without our Commanding Officer at lunch. I swear to God I saw tears in his eyes, so mortally wounded he was.

The Mess Secretary, Lieutenant Abdul Wahid, was sacked and Second Lieutenant Abdul Qayyum was ordered to take over, message conveyed through Senior Subaltern Muzaffar Malik. The whole episode baffled me a little but I recovered soon enough, as wonder gave way to observation and reflection. Out went the bone - china and in came the silver plates for the Sahabzada. Out with all the tumblers and the bottles of sauce on the table (“fit only for a sergeant’s mess”, I had overheard the Colonel mutter); in their place, champagne glasses (for water) and cruets of crystal glass, crested crockery (PAVO, from John Meakin of England) and silver cutlery (hallmark on the handle), crested linen snow-white.

The Sahabzada was pleased and the Colonel in him ordered three dinner nights a week, the rest were supper. We ate for four nights and starved for three. On dinner nights all electric lights were switched off in the dining room, as were the fans. We dined by candle-light, dripless candles on silver candelabras presented by Queen Victoria. If you know what June is like in Kohat and Peshawar, you know what I am talking about. What God ordains is bad enough, what Man inflicts on himself is worse.

We had our fill of water before we came to dinner, champagne glasses do not hold much water as you know. Some of us even ate before, we were after all young and healthy. Good for us, because dinner was a very English meal, many courses but of little substance to write home about. The crowning tragedy was the presence of the Sahabzada at the head of the table. He smiled and we smiled back, wondering what it was all about. The cutlery made no noise, the water went down in silence, the art of munching was made easy with the meagre morsel in our mouth. The Sahabzada spoke little, that little in impeccable English, and I was the only fool to add a word or two to his. He probably knew I had been to the RIMC, to Aitchison, to what have you (with a sword and a gold medal now put to the test). What he did not know was that I had an illustrious and austere father who remained my model, then as now.

Muzaffar Malik said I talked too much (“especially when the CO is around”) and warned me to keep my trap shut, as we stepped into the lawn where several others were already seated in a staggered arc, waiting for the Commanding Officer a clear 30 minutes before his arrival. We were dressed for dinner as cavalry officers were expected to be: in our dinner jackets, stiff collar and shirt - front, hand-tied bow, black patent leather shoes.

Someone was muttering about the intolerable heat, too loud for the CO not to hear, when he sauntered in to-the-second on schedule, with a gracious “Good evening, gentlemen!” When he was seated, we all sat down and silence descended. After a while, he called me over and asked me to feel the texture of his immaculate white shirt: “This shirt breathes. You understand, it breathes! The shirt is not hot and I am not hot. You understand?” I told him I understood, what is more I did not disagree “because all shirts from Paris do breathe”! The Sahabzada smiled, Muzaffar glowered, and we went in to dinner led by the Sahabzada.

The dinner was ordeal enough, made worse by the scowl on Muzaffar’s face. After dinner, after the CO left (“Good night, gentlemen!”), Muzaffar took me aside: “You couldn’t keep your trap shut, could you?” I protested, pointing out that the CO had smiled. Muzaffar’s response was clear and emphatic: “None of your business, whether he smiles or does not smile. Just keep your trap shut!” I promised I would, not quite sure if I would be able to keep my promise come next dinner night. Muzaffar was not sure either, but he let me go when I said the right kind of “Good night, Sir!” strength V (loud and clear), from 2/Lieutenant to Senior Subaltern.

*****

It was 1953, the place Peshawar. Hissam El-Effendi was Commander 100 Brigade, the Sahabzada Commandant 11 Cavalry, Moin-ud-Din (later brigadier, my commander in 3 Armoured Brigade, 1966) the Second-in-Command (21C), and 2nd Lieutenant Abdul Qayyum a subaltern in the regiment. It was Brigade Sports Day and I was assigned the task of conducting the Shot Putt, taking the measurements and announcing the results. I was as thorough as the German General Staff planning the offensive in the Ardennes but slow, taking care to ensure that each measurement was accurate, each announcement clearly made. The Sahabzada came to see how I was faring, complete in his tail - coat and striped trousers, top-hat and silver - knobbed cane - the quintessential country gentleman at the Ascot. I was impressed, the Sahabzada was not: “This boy is slow, far too slow!” he muttered to the 21C, “Why does he take so long?” I overheard the Colonel. After he was gone, I walked over to the Sports Officer (Lieutenant Anwar): “If the Colonel thinks he can do it quicker and better, he is welcome to do it himself!” With that I walked out of the sports ground and Anwar filed his FIR at the right quarters.

The next day I was on the mat in the CO’s office, feeling like Kevin and Ayesha (New York, 1998). When I entered, the Sahabzada had his back toward me and was twirling a revolving book shelf adorned with the Encyclopedia Britannica. He did not acknowledge my salute, kept his back facing me and uttered a muted interrogative. “I understand you have been rude towards me?” “Yes, Sir!” was my reply, with a sincere addition passionately articulated: “And I am deeply sorry. I apologize!” When asked what I said, I repeated the exact words I had said.

The Sahabzada turned around and all hell broke loose. He called me a vermin, a despicable creature, a crawling insect in the gutter, an ungrateful wretch, a serpent which strikes at the very hand that feeds it with milk, a not so exalted member of the canine species (a PYE-dog, for short, I said to myself). After the expletives were over - it took some time - he said I would be Duty Officer till further orders and would submit my report directly to the Assistant Adjutant (Muzaffar Malik). That was that, and he asked me to leave.

I pulled together the smartest salute I have ever made but I refused to leave: “I will not go till you hear me when I say I am deeply sorry, I apologize!” I asked for it, it unleashed a second hurricane. I stood my ground ram-rod erect and when the storm died down, I said: “You hear me, Sir? I am deeply sorry, I apologize!” By now the Colonel had run out of steam and all the Sahabzada could manage was: “Get the hell out of here!” I saluted, turned around a hundred and eighty degrees, turned back, said “I am deeply sorry, I apologize”. As our eyes met, one last salute, one last apology (the same words) and I left the Colonel staring at my back, just as I was staring at him when I entered, his face contemplating the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

When I recalled the story many, many years later, the Sahabzada had a good laugh and quoted Macaulay: “What the claws are to the tiger, what the fangs are to the serpent (‘what the horns are to the bull”, was my literary addition), so is deceit to the Bengalee!” I told him I had good reasons not to agree. Without any discussion and a big smile, he discarded Macaulay in favour of me. He has since then taken to calling me The Terrorist. Very brief, but still not true.

*****

Several weeks before that dressing down in the CO’s office, I had already submitted my resignation from the Army, the first of five before I finally secured my release in 1974. I had topped the weapons and the Junior Officers’ Leadership Course (Quetta, 1953) but I found life in the army going against the basic grain of my mind and spirit.

Following that dressing down, I went on to perform my duties as duty officer with an obsession for expiation. This time around, as I was called to the CO’s office after three weeks, the Sahabzada was sitting in his chair facing me. He asked me to sit down and his face was mellow as he fingered through my reports which, I was sure, he had already scrutinized before. There was a glass of water placed before me which I did not touch. Point noted, he said, he was very pleased with the way I had performed my duties. I said I was deeply sorry and apologized the same words but he went on to talk about cabbages and kings. After a while, he said: “Go, sit in my rover. We will have lunch at the club.”

At the club we chatted for close to two hours. Thank God, Muzaffar Malik was not around. Our closing discussion was on my resignation. He said he would be sorry if I left but he had already spoken to the Adjutant General (General Sher Ali) and now he himself was on his way to the Ecole’ de Guerre (Paris). It would take time, quite some time. His most memorable words were: “But you don’t have to resign. The way you are, they will throw you out — silly fools! You don’t have to resign.”

*****

When Sahabzada Yaqub Khan was Director Armoured Corps and Muzaffar Malik his GSO-2, I was called over for a stint of temporary duty. I recall the DAC’s commitment to the Chaffee (M-24) as the tank then best-suited to our needs and Muzaffar’s travails fixing his tour details so that he knew exactly where to go, when and how. 7-up, he was told, was a train that steamed northward, from Karachi to Peshawar; 12-Down, he was told, was a train that steamed southward, from Peshawar to Karachi; in both cases, the trains passed through Rawalpindi where GHQ was located. Everything was meticulously explained and committed to writing on envelopes, pads, engagement diaries, circulars and what have you.

The DAC knew where to go when and how, but he was getting nowhere with his batman, Dafadar Jahan Khan of the 11th Cavalry (FF). The fellow was crude, said the DAC: no concept of time, no sense of proportion, no understanding of whom to bring where, what to say when, and which painting goes where. The last straw which broke the DAC’s back was when Jahan Khan brought a visitor straight to the bedroom, the DAC still in his night pajamas and contemplating Renoir’s Three Bathers on the wall. Muzaffar and I rushed to the most important rescue mission in our lives.

Jahan Khan was the first to meet us on the steps: “Saab Ji, Aey Dac twadda galan kad da ey. Tilyar Jia Hai vey, hik lapphar maranga .... “Muzaffar cut him short with the most ferocious look on his face that I have ever seen and a volley of expletives too long to record here. Jahan Khan handled well, we went inside into the drawing room for a cup of tea with the DAC. Muzaffar was the very picture of courtesy and competence as he unfolded his operational plan for the taming of Jahan Khan.

We left the Sahabzada assured of better times to come. On our way back home, both of us decided to acquire our own reprint of Renoir. Muzaffar acquired his soon enough, I have still to acquire mine.

*****

When Sahabzada Yaqub Khan was GOC 6 Armoured Division (Kharian, 1962), I was his GSO-3 (Operations). It was a little disconcerting when he showed, more often than not, more trust in me than even in his GSO-1, Muhammad Bashir Khan (later, GOC of the division; even later, a Member of Parliament). Things were going fine, when I dropped a brick again, a big one.

We had applied for entry to the Staff College (Quetta). The Sahabzada said he would interview all the candidates and I would sit to a side to answer all the questions that the others failed to answer. My fall came sooner than expected. Someone was asked how many vehicles there were in the armoured division. When he failed to answer, the Sahabzada’s eyes fell on me and I shook my head as vigorously as I could. “Never mind, take a guess,” said the GOC, “a hundred plus - minus does not really matter.”

I closed my eyes, saw motor pool after motor pool lined up on one side of the Kharian Cantonment. “Well?” asked the GOC. I wished Muzaffar Malik was around to restrain the Sahabzada from allowing me to talk too much. “Well? asked the GOC. Time ran out and I was still in a trance when I blurted out: “40,000, Sir!”

The GOC lost his shirt, he was in no poetic mood. He dismissed all the candidates from his presence and out of the Divisional Headquarters. He called in the GSO-1, grilled me for half an hour, repeating every two minutes. “What did you say? 40,000 did you say? Dear God, Not 40,000! Say that again .... Oh no, not 40,000! “He kept on repeating those lines with such despair, I thought he was Sir Lawrence Olivier performing Hamlet on the stage in Stratford-on-Avon.

He told the GSO-1 he could forward all the applications to GHQ, but not mine: “He will stay on here till he knows the TO&E (Table of Organization and Equipment) of the armoured division backwards, to the last man, the last vehicle, the last nail! You will take the test when he says he is ready and I shall decide whether he is fit or not to go to the Staff College.

You should have seen the charts and the notes I made, and what a master I had become of the TO&E of an armoured division. I was rearing for a test, as restless as a racehorse, when the GOC said: “No, no need for a test. Forward his application. I am myself going to the Staff College and I will be there to see what he makes of it!”

The Sahabzada went on to be the commandant of the Staff College and I went on to complete my Staff Course (1963). That I topped the course was of no consequence to him. Wherever we met, there was a glint in his eyes: “How many vehicles in the armoured division, Qayyum? 40,000? Oh no, Oh no ... Not 40,000!” The Sahabzada had his say. What he did not know was that I had gone beyond the armoured division, and the Quran had become my supreme interest. There was more to life, I came to know, than knowing the TO&E of an armoured division and topping the Staff Course.

*****

At the Staff College the Commandant called Parveen and me to tea. The Sahabzada and his Begum were seated in the drawing room, waiting for us before we entered, to-the-second on time. It was a simple tea, elegantly served. The Sahabzada was gracious. He did not mention the armoured division even once but I thought it would not be improper to regale the Begum with a few anecdotes from our days in the 11th Cavalry (FF).

“Is he as stuffy with you as he was with us”, I asked. The Begum, newly married and still in awe of the Sahabzada, was at a loss for a reply. Never mind, I said, and went on to narrate the story of “the shirt that breathes”. I am sorry the Begum only smiled when she should have laughed. As for the Sahabzada, he interrupted me only once to observe that it was more important to be truthful than dramatic. Quite so, I retorted, and added that he was welcome to send me to the gallows if he found one error in my narration. The Sahabzada never interrupted me again for the 40 minutes or so that we were together. Thank God, Muzaffar Malik was not around.

Towards the end, the conversation veered to children. Before we left, I suggested to the Begum that she should put the baby in the Sahabzada’s lap once in a while, “particularly when it wants to wet itself. That will put both the Sahabzada and the general in their place” “The Begum was satisfied, the Sahabzada cleared his throat, thank God Muzaffar Malik was not around. Before we left, we were all wreathed in smiles.

*****

The GSO-1 Coord (Lieutenant Colonel Mian is all I remember of his name) placed a cyclostyled chit in the student’s lockers “to be returned to this office, duly signed, by ... (within two months)”. It read:

“Certified that I am in possession of the following dresses:

a.  Service dress (winter)          Yes             No

b.  Blue Patrols                         Yes             No

c.  Service dress (summer)        Yes             No

d. Monkey Jacket                    Yes            No

Note:

Tick Yes/No (then followed a strict reminder of certain clauses of the Army Dress Regulations)...

                                                                                                Signed:

                                                                        (PA No., Rank Name)

There was an unholy rush for Perfection House, the “leading tailors and drapers” in town (Quetta). I returned the chit, duly signed, the very next day:

“Certified that I am Not in possession of the following dresses:

                                                                                                Signed:

                                                                        (PA-4030, Major Abdul Qayyum)

Colonel Mian was furious. Not a joke, he said, and threatened to report the matter to the Commandant. When I told him to go ahead, he asked me to get out (of his office). I do not know what happened thereafter because the matter was never mentioned again, not to me. I have always considered these dresses wasteful, beyond our financial means, wholly ceremonial and costing money that would be far better spent on a hundred other necessities. My dinner jacket days were behind me and I made none of these dresses throughout my twenty two years in the Army, except for the Service dress (winter) which was a functional necessity when I went for the German General Staff Course (Hamburg, 1965 and 1970).

*****

When I rushed back from Germany (Hamburg, 1965), not fast enough to catch even the tail of the war, Sahabzada Yaqub Khan was commanding 1 Armoured Division still in the field, with its headquarters in the Nandipur Rest House (near Daska, Sialkot). I was cooling my heels in the Armoured Corps Centre (Nowshera), when the Sahabzada sacked Major Hamid Mukhtar (of 11 Cavalry fame) and I was posted as BM (Brigade Major) of 3 Armoured Brigade, headquarters at the Mianwali Canal Rest House only 10 miles away from where the Sahabzada was. Oh no, I said to myself, this is history repeating itself: Lieutenant Abdul Wahid sacked and Second Lieutenant Abdul Qayyum called in as replacement (1953, Kohat)! Muzaffar Malik was in CMH Rawalpindi, seriously wounded.

It was here that the Sahabzada brought me in touch with his GSO-I (Lt Col M. Zia-ul-Haq), saying: “You two should get to know each other.” I did get to know Zia-ul-Haq, and he me, as I have already recorded elsewhere (Zia-ul-Haq and I, ICCTS Publications, Islamabad, 1997). With GSO-I and BM working in close cooperation, it was not too difficult keeping the Sahabzada in operational trim and in good humour. The focus was on operational reconnaissance, planning, conferences and coordination as we waited for another outbreak of hostilities. The Sahabzada issued a series of Op Instrs (operational instructions) with his acute vision of “launching pads” in response to expected enemy manoeuvres. There were several “hypotheses” and a different pattern in response to each. This was operational planning and readiness of a high order, the best that I have ever personally known. Late in 1966 (or early 1967) the Sahabzada left to don the mantle of the Chief of the General Staff at GHQ. I continued to serve under Gul Hasan as our new GOC. He replaced Brigadier Moin-ud-Din with Jahan Zeb (later GOC) as Commander 3 Armoured Brigade.

Under Gul Hasan (as our GOC) I learnt operational readiness of another kind. Of our encounter I have several episodes to recall and record, but later. Meanwhile, I lost track of Yaqub Khan, went on to command 11 Cavalry (1969) and from there to Germany to complete my General Staff Course (1970). The Sahabzada came on screen again in distant Germany, this time as GOC Eastern Command. What happened in my homeland so far away is to this day not very clear to me and sadly, the Sahabzada never spoke to me about it. Not that the sphinx would not have opened up, but we met many years later (1978). By then much water had flown under the bridge, Bhutto was out and Zia-ul-Haq had taken over command of the country. I myself had lost all appetite for an enquiry into the sordid and the Sahabzada was far away.

*****

From his obscure corner in Station Headquarters, Karachi the Sahabzada went away as our ambassador to Paris (1972) and from there to Washington, where he made a name for himself as a diplomat of uncommon ability. I think he was in Moscow when Zia-ul-Haq called him home to be his Foreign Minister after Agha Shahi (1978). The Sahabzada had a fair inkling, I have good reason to believe, of how Afghanistan was going to blow up in our face. For ten years he steered our foreign policy with great skill, skilfully under very difficult circumstances. Some saw his American connection as Zia-ul-Haq’s trump card; I knew he was not all American. When it came to the formulation of national policy (ultimately Zia-ul-Haq’s prerogative), many other agencies trooped in to distort the foreign policy input. Had Zia-ul-Haq still been around and the Sahabzada his foreign minister, I believe we would have mended our fences with Moscow and contained the mess in Afghanistan. As for its fall-out on Pakistan, much of it was unavoidable, worse compounded by the collapse of good governance within the country. That collapse, it is my understanding, was not Zia-ul-Haq’s handiwork. It made its debut with those who came after him waving the flag of democracy. Between the Benazirs and Nawaz Sharifs it has gone on to consolidate itself as a headlong rush into disaster.

*****

Back to the Sahabzada who went into semi-retirement after Zia-ul-Haq was gone (1988). It is already ten years now as I write (1998) The “semi” part did not interest me much, although we have remained in touch while he was still Foreign Minister and Senator, he got me a telephone connection and a permit for a Suzuki (800 CCS). I am sorry administration in Pakistan had to come to this: the intervention of a Foreign Minister to get a telephone connection and a car permit.

On one of his visits to our apartment in Chaklala, Naila served the Sahabzada tea. With Munier away at the James Madison University, he hoped Naila would see to it that Munier returns. I jumped into the fray without much of a pause: “And why should he return, pray? I am no Sahabzada, or are you going to get him a job in the IBM, the ICI or the American Express? No sir, Munier should go wherever he can earn an honest living for himself and be of service to his fellow men - among the Bantus in Botswana or the Eskimos in Alaska, wherever, but not in Pakistan.” The Sahabzada did not take me to task for what I said. Muzaffar Malik was not around but this time, I think, he would have agreed with me.